
Class ^^ 5^ 

Book 






OUR AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS 






THANKSGIVING DISCOURSE 



de;liveked ix the ~ 



FIRST CONGREGATIONAL UNITARIAN CnURCn 



IX PHILADELPHIA 



AUGUST 6tli 1863 



BY W. H. FURNESS 



MINISTER 



PHILADELPHIA 

PUBLISHED BY T. B. PUGH 

S. W. COKNEK SIXTH AND CHEST.M'T STS. 

18 6 3 , 






^ 



^/^ 



DISCOURSE 



DEUT. YIII. 10. 



"thou SHALT BLESS THE LORD THY GOD FOE THE GOOD LAND WHICH HE 
HATH GIVEN THEE." 

I come here to-day, my friends, with pecuHar alacrity. 
I am glad of the opportunity offered us for the united 
expression of the thankfulness that every thoughtful 
man feels in view of our public affairs ; and who is there 
that has not been made thoughtful in these times 1 It 
is no formality that we are here this morning to 
observe. We have reasons for the heartiest gratitude. 
First and foremost among them all, beyond any special 
cause for thanksgiving that Ave may have in recent 
events, is the large liberty which is ours by the course 
of nature, by inlieritance. And what I invite you now 
to consider, that your hearts may swell with gratitude, 
are the Equal Institutions to which it is our rare felicity 
that we were born. Never have we had such reason to 
prize them as now. Of these I propose particularly to 
speak. 

It is only very recently, within less than the last 
three years, only indeed since the Rebellion broke out, 
that the present generation has been made at all aware 
of the worth of the social advantages enjoyed by the 
population of these free Northern States. For long 
years before, upon the return of our national birth-day 
and as other occasions were presented, we were wont to 



glorify our civil and religious liberties in all manner of 
high-sounding phrase. But there was very little of a 
discriminating sense of their value. From a material 
point of view we could not be blind to their worth. 
We could not help seeing what power and wealth they 
were accumulating, how rapidly and to what greatness 
the nation was growing under them. But of their 
choicest uses, of their moral effect, of the part which 
they take in forming the character of the people, in 
breathing a soul into the nation, in a word, in making 
the nation what it is, we have had no clear and strong 
sense, and mainly for two reasons. 

First, because the moral influence of institutions is 
never a matter of outward observation. Although it is 
constant, it is silent and works in numberless unnoticed 
ways. Men are affected by it as by the light, and they 
take no more note of it than of the air that they are 
breathing. Rarely do they know what spirit they are 
of, or how much it is determined by the circumstances 
and social forms established around them. The moral 
results of these come under the eye only upon great 
occasions, at critical hours. And they cannot even then 
be handled, weighed, or measured. 

And then again we have failed to appreciate the 
moral effect of our free institutions, because it has been 
hidden from us by the steadily increasing disturbance 
caused by that unequal and oppressive institution which 
has been suffered to coexist with them. The trouble 
which this caused grew to be so serious that it soon 
came to monopolize public attention. For years past it 
has been the one engrossing topic. So that it has natu- 
rally seemed to many that, however excellent in theory, 
our republican institutions, practically, were serving but 



little purpose save the purposes of oppression and tend- 
ing to the ruin of the nation. For fifty years and more 
the Constitution was interpreted and the Government 
administered with an all but exclusive concern for an 
institution radically at war with every idea of equal 
justice and personal liberty. Consequently our free 
institutions, as representative of these ideas, seemed to 
be so neutralized as to have become nothing more than 
hypocritical pretences, the forms of liberty without its 
life. 

Thus has it happened that until the present trouble 
came, we had a very imperfect notion of the value of 
our pohtical system, what a gift of God it is. But 
events are enlightening us. Notwithstanding the shadow 
and the shame of a huge oppression long resting over 
the whole land, we are finding out now as for the first 
time that it has not been to no moral purpose that for 
three-quarters of a century the growing millions of the 
North have been associated upon such terms of personal 
equality before the law, as had never before been reahzed 
on this globe. Then it was, when the nation was suddenly 
assaulted, that it broke upon us like a revelation from 
heaven that, as we have had no privileged classes among 
us, as the whole tendency of our Northern social life 
has been, not only to permit, but to encourage the full 
unfolding of every individual nature, and consequently 
as no opportunity has been given for the upspringing 
of those feehugs of mutual alienation, contempt and 
enmity which unequal laws always sow, it had come 
to pass naturally and of necessity that the hearts 
of the people had grown into one. Without our being- 
conscious of it, with all our State lines and State rivalries, 
we of the North had become one people. Silently, 



gradually, insensibly, our republican institutions, while 
in their formal and official action, they seemed wholly 
perverted to the purposes of injustice, had been creating 
a grand National Unity. So imperceptibly had the 
creation gone on, that we never became aware of it, 
until a violent attempt was made to disintegrate the 
the nation. Then it was that one sentiment was found 
animating the whole people of the North, and they rose 
to the attitude of defence as one man. Then it was 
that, when to foreign eyes and even to our own, we had 
seemed to be crumbling into pieces, a living, mighty 
nation was discovered. It was like the sudden unveiling 
to the sun of some majestic statue which an artist, 
hidden within an intricate scaffolding, had been for 
years steadily at work in fashioning. 
. For this then let us thank God to-day, that he has 
given us institutions which so fully embody and so 
faithfully apply the principle of human equality that the 
hearts of the people have grown together and become 
one. To this principle, thus brought into practical 
operation, this Nation owes its existence and its vigor. 
So constituted is our social condition, that instead of 
the ill-will and hostility which must always abound 
where all are not regarded by the law as equal and 
alike, it is made the nature of our people to respect, 
every man his neighbor's rights. It is as natural here, 
this mutual respect, as iron and coal are in Pennsyl- 
vania, or granite and ice in New England. 

I do not mean, however, to say that the people of 
these Free States are without fault in this respect. I 
do not forget what human nature always has been and 
is, and how the love of power and a host of selfish 
passions, are always straining upon the leash, always 



endangering the good order of society. I do not mean 
that all social evils have here come to an end. Far 
from it. But I do say, that, so far as the civil order 
of things here instituted is concerned, the tendency 
has been and is to create an unprecedented degree 
of social harmony. There is no occasion given here by 
our social forms for the growth of those disorganizing 
passions which unequal social arrangements always 
favor, and which are forever threatening the internal 
peace of nations, and creating the argument for strong 
governments. On the contrary, our American social 
system, so far as the political forms of a people, which, 
while they are the people's work, become, in return, the 
creators of the people, forming the popular character, 
— so far, I repeat, our social constitution operates to 
generate a controlling sentiment of respect for personal 
rights, which is the security of the public peace, a 
sound public conscience in relation to the intercourse 
of man with man. 

And so powerfully has it worked in this way, so 
strong a sense of justice and personal liberty has been 
wrought into the very being of our Northern people, 
and become their second nature, the genius of the place 
and the people, that, at this hour, when so deadly an 
assault has been made upon the life of the nation, 
when so powerful a conspiracy has been formed for its 
destruction, and by a class of men upon whom the 
nation has lavished its offices and honors, and whom it 
has protected in the monstrous right which they claim 
to make merchandize of humanity, when too, the peo- 
ple, incapable of believing in the possibility of anything 
so wicked and so insane as a rebellion against a 
Government unexampled for its freedom, have been 



8 

taken wholly unawares; at this hour, thus fie^.-cely 
assaulted, thus taken entirely off t" -r guard, so deeply 
has the sense of equal rights ) n planted in* the 
Northern mind by the institutio' • of Freedom, that, 
with the odds so fearfully against them at the moment, 
the people have repelled the assault, have more than 
kept their foes at bay, and everything indicates their 
sure and perfect triumph. 

Yes, friends, for the hopeful aspec /hich the Cause 
of the Nation now wears, we are, ^ ibove everything 
else, indebted to that which our Ji^' .olican Institutions 
have made to be the rulina- o'enius c*f the North, — the 
love of justice and freedom. We have had no great 
men. But we have a great people, great, not through 
any superiority of blood, not through the prestige of 
any previously won martial renown, not through any 
new and wonderful endowments of intellect, but great, 
through that sense of equal rights, which the constant 
influence of our social surroundings has converted into 
an instinct, a feeling so identified w'^'h the very blood 
and muscle of the people, that, li^ - the folly of the 
fool, though you should bray them in a mortar, you 
could not make them let it go. 

Such is the blessed, the inestimable product of our 
Hepublicanism. It has been introduced L , the Nor- 
thern nature unconsciously, like the kingdom of God, 
" without observation," through no merit, no effort of 
ours. Our own will has had as littJ^ to do with it as 
with our breathing or the circulation' )f our blood. It 
is the pure gift and grace of God, vo- chsafed to us 
through the happy circumstances in the midst of which 
His bountiful Providence has appointed our lot. And 
for this great favor, which we had done nothing to 



9 

dese]:ve, let us offer our fervent thanks to the Great 
Giver this day. y '■ to ourselves be the praise, but to 
the Infinite Powei i whose hand the hearts of men 
are as clay in the 1 id of the potter. 

And thank God, ^jo, that our republican forms have 
been so potent, and have produced a love of freedom so 
strong that the nation is standing in triumph a trial 
so severe as the present. For, I repeat, it is this, the 
public spirit of ^' " North, that has brought us thus far, 
and to which c success is due. We have a man 
standing at the . 1 of the nation, who, for his im- 
moveable singlene;5S of purpose, possesses the public 
confidence to a degree which has never been exceeded. 
We have in the National councils and in the field, 
men, faithful and brave, whose names will be held in 
undying honor. But neither, in council nor in the 
field, has there appeared any extraordinary genius to 
command events and compel success. To the spirit of 
the people is it owing that the National integrity has 
been so wonderfully maintained. It is this that, with- 
out hesitation or nt, keeps pouring into the hands of 
the Government, material resources that seem well nigh 
inexhaustible. It is this, that is presenting to the 
world so manly an instance of National patience under 
delays t ^ , most wearisome and defeats the most 
humiliating.^, It is this which accepts delays and de- 
feats and all manner of errors as a gracious discipline, 
intended to harden us into perseverance and render us 
only the more ea^ucst. It is this which has organized 
the humanity of the North, initiated the women into 
one vast sisterhood of Mercy, and sent a host of men 
and women to surround the battle-field Mdth all possible 

means and appliances to alleviate its sufferings. It is 

1* 



10 

this, which, to so remarkable a degree, has saved the 
general mind from the vindictiveness which a civil war 
especially tends to kindle. It is this which is steadily 
and rapidly gaining one of the grand triumphs of the 
time: the destruction of the barbarian prejudice of 
race, and the opening to the men of African descent of a 
career in which they may not only receive justice, but 
win gratitude and renown. And, above all, it is this 
which has prompted thousands and hundreds of thou- 
sands to rush to the defence of the country, in no spirit 
of bitterness, not from any impulse of personal ill-will, 
but to suffer and die in that sacred behalf. And 
thousands, with a heroism which has never been sur- 
passed, have made the last most costly sacrifice of 
patriotism, laying life in its full bloom with its tenderest 
ties and most brilliant hopes, upon the altar of their 
native land. Never was chapel or shrine so hung all 
round and all over with such precious votive offerings 
as the temple of our National liberty is now. Dearer 
than ever should our country be to her children, conse- 
crated as she is by so much noble blood poured out for 
her sake. Holier than ever should be her cause, and 
more earnest than ever our purpose to cleanse her royal 
robes of every stain and spot of the foid poison which 
has threatened to destroy her. 

For long years we have been told that these Free In- 
stitutions of ours were only an experiment, that they 
were on trial, and that it was very doubtful whether 
they could stand any test. We did not perceive that 
every year they lasted, they were working without 
intermission, as busily as God works in the spring-time, 
as busily as He works at all times, to moidd this people 
and inspire them with a spirit which should be their 



11 

strength at sucli an hour as this. The truth is, the 
Evil One has been trying all the time to baulk the 
institutions of Freedom. That we saw. That we could 
not help seeing. For, as the Devil works always against 
the grain of a Universe which he did not make, but 
which the good God made for his own good purposes, 
he must needs make a great noise and dust. He finds 
nothing made to his hand. And though he use all his 
cunning (and therein his genius chiefly lies,) to hide 
his hand, and not let it be known what mischief he is 
doing, he cannot entirely disguise himself, no, not even 
though he put on the form of an angel of light and 
move never so softly. With all his de\dces, he makes 
such an uproar that he attracts universal attention. 
And our attention being thus taken up, we forget 
that the good God is working far more busily still. 
He never rests. But as He has created all things 
for His own good uses and every atom serves His will, 
He makes no dust, no noise, and so His working es- 
capes our notice, and we do not discern the operation 
of His hands. 

Thus has it come to pass that we have not seen how 
the social order, estabhshed in these Northern States 
has been forming the nature of the people. But now, 
at this extraordinary period, when the seed so secretly 
nourished has burst forth into gorgeous flower, — now 
what escaped our notice is apparent enough. Now it 
is plain h5w our Republican Institutions have gro"wn 
into the popular heart. Now they are put to the test 
and they have thus far stood it, how triumphantly ! I 
am at a loss to conceive how they could be more severely 
tried. Have not some hundreds of thousands of able- 
bodied men, the strength and pride of the land, gone to 



12 

hazard limb and life in support of the Government, and 
this of their own free will or in deference to the demands 
of the public sentiment of the country'? And now that 
the public necessities require a still larger amount of 
military service, could the people be subjected to a 
severer test than the Draff? Could anything show 
more satisfactorily what a deep foundation our institu- 
tions have in the affections of the people than their 
acquiescence in this compulsory measure '? To my 
thinking, our Government is shown to be of unsur- 
passed strength. Is there a Government now on the 
face of the Earth, or has there ever been one, that can 
boast so broad a basis in the good-will of its people '? 
Our form of government ought to be the strongest in 
the world, for it is the people's own choice ; and what it 
ought to be, as is now shown, it is. 

I do not overlook the fact that the unanimity of the 
North is not absolute. It would be a suspicious cir- 
cumstance if it were. It would look too much like the 
unanimity of the South, and as if it had been produced 
by the same means. What Southern unanimity is, we 
all know. It is the result of a reign of force and terror, 
to which the reign of terror in the old French Revo- 
lution is but a passing shadow, and which was estab- 
lished in the South, years before the Rebellion broke 
out, dooming men to instant outrage and death, not for 
any act done or word spoken, but for the opinions it 
Avas suspected they must entertain as strangers of 
Northern birth. Under such a rule, the people of the 
South are of course unanimous. Only heaven-sent 
saints and apostles could have been otherwise minded. 
We can lay claim to no such imanimity. We were too 
long associated with the South in upholding a system 



I 



13 

of oppression at war with our Northeni institutions, too 
long was the Northern mind drugged with that poison, 
to escape the blindness moral and mental, which it 
causes. And it was no more than was to be expected, 
that, when the hour of open disruption came, there 
should be found a portion of our Northern people who 
had become so perverted by the habit of advocating 
tlie cause of our Southern brethren, that they had 
entirely forgotten their Northern brethren, and had 
learned to prefer the oppression of the African race to 
the salvation of their country ; a class, to whom there 
is nothing worthy in the land unless it is watered by the 
tears and blood of slaves, no music in the voice of 
Liberty, unless it mingles with the clanking of chains 
and the groans of the oppressed. 

So far n-om being surprised that there are so many here 
in the North whose prejudice against a race is stronger 
than their love of their country, we may well wonder 
that there are not more, when we recollect how active, 
for three quarters of a century, the Slave Power was in 
depraving the moral sense of the nation, in deadening 
the minds of the people to the supreme worth of equal 
liberty, in teaching them to account the vital principles 
of our Bill of Rights as mere " glittering generalities." 
Why, the institution of Human Bondage was once so 
powerful that it had become the fountain of office and 
honor, and slave-masters were deferred to as scarcely 
less than a titled nobility. It was prophecied at an 
early period by one of the Pinckneys, that, if Slavery 
lasted fifty years it would extinguish the love of liberty 
in the land. It has extinguished it at the South, and 
to such an extent that people there avow their prefer- 
ence for monarchical institutions. And the wonder is. 



14 

I say, that it has not unfitted the people of the whole 
country, North as well as South, for a republican form 
of government. At one time it really seemed as if the 
prediction of the Southern statesman had come true, so 
ready was the nation to concede everything to the Slave 
Power, so unpopular was it everywhere to speak a loud 
word in defence of the first and fundamental principle 
of the Declaration of Independence. Then when the 
very language of Liberty had become harsh to the public 
ear, then it seemed as if the spirit of Liberty was indeed 
extinct, and that the indignant remonstrances of a few 
against the extending empire of the Slave Power were 
but the dying spasms of our national life. 

But it was not so, and let us this day thank Heaven 
from our inmost hearts that it was not so. Instead of 
being dismayed at such manifestations as we witness of the 
existence of a class here at the North in sympathy with 
the Southern idolatry of bondage, rejoice and be thankfid 
rather that the spirit of Liberty has proved too strong 
to be wholly overcome by the Slave Power. Although 
such powerful influences were so long and so constantly 
at work, such blandishments and such threats, — enough 
to deprave the very elect, — now, thank God, it is made 
apparent that the popular heart is true to freedom still, 
and a unity of feeling exists, which, having brought the 
nation thus far, will, I trust in heaven, suffice for all the 
working purposes of this great exigency. 

Whatever may appear to the contrary, the main tend- 
ency of things is, not to the diminution, but to the in- 
crease, of Northern unanimity. The course of events 
is revealing, more and more plainly, the hatefulness of 
the Slave Power, showing what barbarism follows in 
its train. Strange is it, passing strange, after all that 



15 

has occurred, at this late hour, that there should be any 
persons among us of ordinary intelligence who do not 
yet perceive that this bloody struggle, with all the mis- 
ery it involves, is the direct and inevitable consequence 
of that monstrous and deeply-seated Wrong. But such 
persons there are, persons whom even the New York 
riot, with its horrible barbarities, has left unconvinced; 
persons who could not be persuaded of the truth though 
Jackson and Clay and Webster were to rise from the 
dead to declare it ; persons whose \iews are so com- 
pletely inverted that they insist that it is not the thieves 
who disturb the public peace, but the people who first 
raise the hue and cry against them. Still, although 
such there are, the main current runs in the right 
direction, onward. The chains of prejudice and error 
are loosening and dropping off all around us, and we 
are constantly meeting with those who rejoice in their 
newly found dehverance. 

Let us be thankfid, then, for the spirit Avliich has 
come to us through our Free Institutions. It is a thing 
to be thanlvful for, for it is no acquisition of ours, but 
the pure gift of heaven. Without our will, almost 
against our wiU, by the force of our happy and freedom- 
favoring circumstances, it has been breathed into us 
until it has become a governing principle of the North- 
ern mind. And, moreover, to the free bent, to the 
genius for freedom, ingrained, naturalised into the 
Northern character we owe our safety, thus far to this, 
the grace of God, and to this unaided and alone. 

The spirit of the North owes little of its strength to 
any foreign sympathy. There is another nation on the 
other side of the Atlantic, a people, from whom our 
people sprung, and to whom we are united by strong 



16 

ties of unprecedented intimacy. A common blood, a 
common language, a common literature, a common love 
of liberty and a common faith have bound Enerland and 
America together as no two great independent commu- 
nities have ever before been united in the history of the 
world. The case has no precedent nor parallel. On the 
one hand, England, venerable in the renown of centu- 
ries and clothed in the authority of the highest civiliza- 
tion yet attained by mankind ; on the other, America, 
young, advancing, strong in her English blood, holchng 
English opinion for the public opinion of the Avorld, 
and emulating English greatness. When this ferocious 
slaveholders plot was sprung upon us, had our mother 
country evinced that feeling for us which her near 
relationship to us and her high Anti-slavery reputation 
justified us in expecting, what animation would it not 
have given to the hearts of our people ! We did not look 
to her, we never dreamed of looking to her, for material 
aid. But we did expect that the public voice of England 
would have come rolling in incessant thunders across the 
Atlantic in denunciation of the attempt to erect a Slave 
empire within the precincts of Christendom, and in 
scorn of a proffered alliance with the dealers in human 
flesh. Had that expectation been fulfilled, had we had 
from England the moral support which our descent and 
her great history warranted us in depending upon, there 
is no telling, I repeat, what strength it would have 
given us. It would have been more to us than whole 
fleets of iron-clads. But, as we have learned to our 
bitter cost, our dependence upon English magnanimity 
was mournfully misplaced. When the life and death 
struggle of Freedom and Slavery began, the English 
government had no higher position to take towards it 



n 

than the ground of a strict neutrality, moral as well as 
material; and England feels no hurt to her honor in so 
interpreting her laws as to permit pirates to be fitted 
out in her ports and manned by Englishmen to prey 
upon our commerce, and to put under bonds the vessels 
returning to us from her shores, whither they had been 
sent laden down with food for her starving poor. 

It is well for us, however, that it has been so. Our 
National Independence is thus become assured abroad 
as well as at home. And only the more plainly is it 
made to appear that to the Nation itself and alone is 
the triumph of the Nation due. 

But not only are we fighting the battle of Freedom, 
uncheered by the sympathy we had a right to look for, 
the fact is disclosed that, however friendly the interest 
felt in us here and there abroad, there is no public 
earnest national goodwill for the Republic anywhere in 
all the world. Instead, however, of discouraging us, 
the discovery of this fact must have no effect but to 
impress us all the more deeply wdth a sense of the 
grandeur of our Cause. We are contending, it appears, 
for universal freedom, against all oppression, abroad as 
well as here. The coldness, nay, the worse than cold- 
ness of foreign governments, the satisfaction, which 
they have not been able to conceal, at the prospect of 
our breaking up, has reminded us of what indeed we 
ought not to have forgotten, that monarchies and aris- 
tocrasies are by nature hostile to republican institutions. 
To princes and nobles and their retainers the idea of 
equal rights is necessarily repugnant. They are bound 
to despise it. Its triumph will be a disaster to all the 
forms of despotism or mastership, limited or unlimited, 
throughout the world. Having a Cause so great, we 



18 

can afford to bear with composure the dislike of foreign 
governments. l,et them stand aloof and make no sign 
of sympathy with us, but send their congratulations to 
the French usurper upon the success of his buccaneering 
assault upon Mexico. It is enough that we know that 
we have the prayers of every lover of liberty, of the 
John Brights, throughout the world. Let us be con- 
tent to wdn success through no outside help, but by the 
pure strength of that love of justice and of freedom 
with which, through the Free Institutions He has given 
us, God has inspired this people. 

And thank Heaven, my friends, to-day tliat our 
republican system is as pacific in its external as in its 
internal relations, as pow^erful to maintain peace with 
others as to produce unity among ourselves. In times 
past, before this civil trouble broke out, when we pre- 
sented the appearance of an undivided Union, our 
growth in power was so great that England and France 
never sought, they took good care to avoid, all occasions 
of quarreling with us. They paid us, in form at least, 
a scrupulous respect. There w^as reason in those days 
w^hy this country should inspire dread. But that reason 
existed, not in our republican institutions, but in the 
anti-republican power which was then in the ascendent 
in our national councils. Slaveholding had fed and 
fostered those passions from which, ever since the 
world began, have come wars and fightings. It is the 
essential vice of despotism, in all its forms, that it 
necessarily developes the love of power to an inordinate 
degree, and renders the privileged class, be they called 
kings, lords, or slaveholders, imperious, impatient of the 
restraints which the rights of others impose, quick to 
take offence, to make their will the law to others as 



19 

it is to themselves, and so comes discord. In fine, it 
destroys the sense of justice in those who practice it, 
and, as we are now learning to our cost, there is no 
such thing as hving in peace with those who have lost 
that, who do not hold the rights of others to be as 
sacred as their own. Yes, this Republic, -svith its 
mighty resources and rapidly increasing millions, was 
indeed formidable to the peace of the world, but only 
when the Slave Power, being in the control of its ad- 
ministration, was breeding in it the lust of power which 
alone could render it aggressive. But even British 
statesmen, with all their native sagacity and high cul- 
ture, have been so blinded by their aristocratic biases, 
and by the greed and the prospect of immediate advan- 
tage, that they do not perceive that, in the very nature 
of things, a republican form of government hke ours is 
and must be, of all forms of government, the most 
pacific. 

Where every man is habituated from his birth to a 
restraining sense of the equal rights of others, and rulers 
exercise their brief and limited authority under the 
constant pressure of the principle of equality, which has 
become the pervading sentiment of the people, there no 
opportunity is afibrded for the growth of that excessive 
love of power which is forever driving men and nations 
to encroach upon the rights of others and so to make 
wars inevitable. Hence it is that a community, based 
upon an acknowledgment of the equal rights of all, 
while it tends by its very nature to internal harmony, 
is, of aU communities, least inclined to aggression. Were 
this fact discerned, the nations would see that, in the 
countenance which they are giving to the attempt that 
is making to establish a slave empire on this soil, they 



20 

are preparing to bring into Christendom a new fomen- 
ter of discord, and putting in additional peril the peace 
of the world. As they would avert wars and fightings, 
they should accord their special sympathy to the cause 
of the American Union now that it is striving unto 
blood to rid itself of that one element, which is just 
as truly hostile to its amicable relations to other coun- 
tries, as it is now fearfully proved to be to its own 
existence. 

But unhappily this same war-generating element of 
injustice, in greater or less strength, in forms more or 
less disguised, is present, a vital element in all the lead- 
ing governments of the old world, forming the views 
and prompting the measures of those who administer 
them, and therefore it is not a Slave empire, but the 
E-epublic, which is most hated. And it must be con- 
fessed, a republic is indeed terrible to all the upholders 
of privilege and unjust power, and the more terrible, 
the more faithful it is to its principles, the more har- 
monious it is in itself, and the more disposed it is to 
mind its own concerns and meddle with none ; for 
then what an overwhelming argument is it against all 
those social systems which, sacrificing the many to the 
few, and continually disturbing the so-called balance of 
power among themselves, make peace the exception, 
and war the rule in the history of mankind ! It is in- 
deed so. A true republic, a community, founded upon 
justice and practically observant thereof, must be a 
terror to the whole world of oppressors, hateful most of 
all, as we now see, to those who are accustomed to 
practice the grossest injustice. Well does Jefferson 
Davis prefer association with hyenas to Union with the 
free men of the North. There can be no doubt of that. 



LBD'ib 



21 

We may believe him there. It is a more congenial 
companionship. 

We shall never need to engage in a crnsade against 
the despotisms of the old world. We must leave it to 
them npon the slightest pretexts to interfere by force 
of arms with other nations as the French tyrrint is now 
doino^ in Mexico. It is their nature and their doom. 
We have only to be true to ourselves, only to let the 
light of the Ixepublic so shine, the light of harmony at 
home and peace abroad, and civil and religious liberty 
will fill the world with a glory, before which the dark- 
ness of oppression, here and everywhere, shall vanisli 
even as the morning mists disappear at the rising of the 
sun. 

Dear friends, notwithstanding all the sorrows of the 
time, and they are neither few nor light, although in 
our several circles we miss beloved ones, yet let us join 
in hearty thanksgiving that God in his mercy is doing 
such great things for us, inviting us to be fellow-laborers 
with him in advancing the best interests of mankind. It 
is in this sacred work that our friends, brothers, sons, 
are hazardino- and offerinsf their lives. The ano-uish 
of bereavement must be alleviated by a sense of the 
glorious Cause for which these precious sacrifices are 
made. Be it ours so to testify our gratitude to Heaven, 
so to labor and endure to the end that it shall not be in 
vain that this great price of blood is paid. 



